There have been developed and actually used various multi-player type of game machines in which a plurality of players can enjoy the same game at the same time. In such a game, for example, each player can be provided with a game machine, each game machine being designed to output game images and sounds toward the corresponding player. Each player thus can enjoy a fight or cooperation with other players in the game while viewing the outputted game images and hearing the outputted game sounds.
However, such game machines had the following problem. Referring to FIG. 1, a player 500 has to sit on a seat 510, for example, when he or she desires to fight against another player 502. On the other hands, the player 500 has to sit on a seat 512 when he or she wants to fight against a further player 504. When the player 500 desires to fight against the player 502 and if the seat 510 is not empty, the player 500 has to wait until the seat 510 becomes empty. In the conventional game machine, thus, the freedom to select an opponent player was limited.
For a tournament type of game (in which only a winner can get the right to continue the game), a player 504 who is winning successive victories can not play a fighting game against another player until the next challenger sits on the seat 512.